Thursday, 26 November 2009

I had a headmistress with lofty ambitions for her girls.She decided to teach us Ancient Greek.Unfortunately she only had time to show us the alphabet and start us off on a textbook about the boy Thrasymachus.The Greek alphabet was stuck on the wall opposite my seat at the dinner table,so I absorbed that with my mother's good cooking.For the rest, all I remember is how to say, 'thunder and lightening','Greetings o Thrasymachus',and most perpelexing of all, the words to the song,'Oh dear, what can the matter be?'

Friday, 20 November 2009

Yesterday on my way to a secondhand bookshopin the Charing Cross Road,

I took a quick photo of the revolving globe atop the London Coliseum.

Like so much of the Victorian architecture in the city,

it is massive yet invisible, shouting yet silent.

It was only this evening when I uploaded the picture that I began to marvel

at the staggering effort and expense that produced such elaborate detailing,

much of it well above eye level.

The English Heritage listing details make an intoxicating shopping list of architectural folderols:

The Coliseum Theatre (English National Opera) - II* Grand theatre.

1902-04 by Frank Matcham , originally built for (Sir) Oswald Stoll.

Channelled terracotta facing

exuberant FreeBaroqueambitious design

richly decorated interiorsvastand grandioseauditorium

asymmetricalfacadeloftytower

triple arcadedentrances

polished red granitecolumns voussoirs

finely executed decorative woodwork

2 storeyed voussoiredarchivoltarched entrance

elaborately architraved windows

Ioniccolonnaded shallow loggia storeymassively bracketedbalconies

3 pedimentedaediculesentablature crowning balustrade

pavilion-towerquoin pilasters

richly embellished caps tiled dome with lantern

balconied Venetian window

elaborate corniceenriched withcartouches,

Ionic peristyle with figure sculpture at corners

balustradepedestalledballfinial drum withoculi

stepped dome

large metal and glass globelavish foyermarble facings

wealth ofeclecticclassical detail

Byzantine opulence

squat columns

Sullivanesquedomed canopies

Ionic-columned pairs of 2 tiered orchestra boxes

pedimented frames surmounted by sculptural groups

lion-drawnchariots

great, semicircular, blockedarchitrave proscenium arch

cartouche-trophykeystone

elaborated baysdecorated piers

classical relief friezemassive coupled brackets

cyclorama track

The Theatres of London; Mander and Mitchenson.

and this in more restrained prose from The Era Review 17th December 1904:

From here the tower assumes different outlines, formed by trusses and niches, and the introduction of sculptured lions; the whole is carried up, getting less in diameter as the top is approached,when the eight figures in the shape of cupids supporta large iron revolving globe,to which is attached large electric letters spelling 'Coliseum'.

The globe is made to revolve,and this artistic advertisement can be seen for many miles.

A further novelty in advertising is the electric device along the front,which gives the nature of the performance taking placeat the time during the evening.

A veranda covers the pavement in front of the principal entrance,formed of glass and iron, a feature being the way in which the glass is curved in shapes,and the handsome panelled glass in the fascia,the whole when lighted up by electricity forminga very attractive feature in St. Martin's Lane.

Thursday, 19 November 2009

At the beginning of November she made up her mind that this time, for once, she would get her Christmas shopping done early.

She went as far as writing out a list - and there, for several weeks, the matter rested.

At intervals she tried to pretend that Christmas Day fell on the 5th of December, or, alternatively, that all her friends and relations lived in South Africa and that she had to catch an early mail; but it was no use.

The feeling of temporal urgency cannot be artificially produced, any more than the feeling of financial distress.

from Christmas Shopping -Jan Strutherposter printed by Fosh and Cross Ltd. London 1945

Monday, 16 November 2009

I haven't been able to grow physalis very successfully but the Honesty self-seeds everywhere

and has the power to transport me back to infant school.

This is an extract from a lovely essay about lunaria bienni which can be found here,

"...the seede commeth foorth conteined in a flat thinne cod, with a sharp point or pricke at one end, in fashion of the moone, and somewhat blackish. This cod is composed of three filmes or skins, whereof the two outmost are of an ouerworne ashe colour, and the inner-most, or that in the middle whereon the seed doth hang or cleaue, is thin and cleere shining, like a piece of white satten newly cut from the peece."

Sunday, 15 November 2009

All the associations of November, the traditional flotsam left upon its shore by the successive tides of history, went ill with halcyon weather. It was the wind-month, the blood month, Brumaire, the month of darkness: its sign was the evil scorpion, who, when surrounded by a ring of fire, was said to sting itself

and die of its own poison.

When she reached the Embankment

she met the full force of the gale,

and exulted in it.

Yes this was the kind of weather

that the events of the world called for:

a wild, dark day, suitable for a wild, dark mood.

From the two tall chimneys of the power station the smoke streamed out horizontally,